The unexpectedly most successful category on Kickstarter

If you were to guess which category on Kickstarter had the highest rate of successful funding, without peeking, you might guess “Technology” or “Film & Video.” Big names like smartwatch maker Pebble and actor Zach Braff have made waves with their multimillion-dollar campaigns.

Across all of Kickstarter, 43 percent of projects get funded, but it may surprise some to find out that the small but dedicated collection of dance projects boasts a funding rate of 71 percent.

“Dancers are hardcore,” says Roche Janken, part of a San Francisco dance group known as vîv, noting that the community is as supportive as it is competitive. “It’s the offline part of dancing that makes the online work so well.”

The comparisons of success rates to Film & Video (39.9) and Technology (34.6) aren’t exactly equal, of course — both have higher average funding goals. But you could also argue that due to their popularity, they have bigger pools of backers.

Kerensa DeMars is organizing an all-female performance of flamenco music, entitled Flamenca. While the Bay Area has a very strong flamenco music scene, finding women to play all the musical instruments was difficult. Some gentlemen even offered to play in drag.

“If you’re not a non-profit, it’s really challenging to get funding — especially for dancers,” she says. “Even if you sell out at an average ticket price, you often can’t pay for the whole production.” She points out that even the San Francisco Ballet spends an enormous amount of time fundraising.

Kickstarter stats reinforce this. To date, across all categories, the company has received 11.5 million total pledges for a whooping $832 million in successfully and unsuccessfully funded projects. Yet only $5 million of that has been for dance projects.

Kickstarter allows artists, inventors or entrepreneurs to submit project ideas, be it for a new technology, clothing or artistic endeavor. The project creator sets a fundraising goal and a time window, and then asks the masses for financial support. If they hit the goal within the timeframe, they get the money for the project after a 5 percent fee from Kickstarter. If not, all money is returned to the would-be backers.

“It’s a little disappointing,” he says. “Even people in Cuba don’t know about it.”

Suarez says he’ll continue looking for ways to fund the project, but it’s a harder now. He spent a lot of capital pushing the Kickstarter campaign to his mailing lists and 4,500 Facebook followers. He’s considering applying for grants, “but that takes a long time.”

All those who donated pledged to Suarez’s campaign will get their money backnot be charged, a function of the go-big-or-go-home nature of Kickstarter. Unsuccessful projects mean no one (even Kickstarter) gets paid. This is somewhat in contrast to Indiegogo, a rival crowdsourcing site, which does have an option to pay out even if the creator doesn’t hit the goal, albeit with a higher fee. Indiegogo also has a dance category but does not publish statistics on category or funding success. (A spokesperson says that Indiegogo doesn’t discuss proprietary or competitive data.)

As of this morning, with seven days to go, DeMars’s campaign was still about $500 shy of the $3000 goal. Even if they come up short, they’ll push on and take a financial loss on the performance which premiers in the Mission later this month.

“We find these people who are so passionate, and they deserve to be compensated for it,” she says. “But we all entered into this with the understanding that if we didn’t hit the Kickstarter, we’d still share this with the community.”

Janken’s Kickstarter, re-create dance, hit its funding goal of $6,500 sometime around Monday morning which will allow the eight dancers to work with Kathleen Hermesdorf, a premier choreographer. Janken notes that for the average backer, dance projects have a twist when compared to more common Kickstarter projects.

“It’s a little bit strange,” she says. “You don’t get a prize at the end. There’s nothing to keep.”